The History of Rome: Rise and Fall of the Empire. John Bagnell Bury
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he was unable to complete. He planned a work, which has been often designed but never executed, the making of a canal through the Isthmus of Corinth. His most during construction was the bridge across the Gulf of Baiae (39 A.D.), which was clearly not intended to be permanent. A soothsayer, it is said, had prophesied that Gaius would never become Emperor any more than he would drive a chariot across the Gulf of Baias. Gaius determined to drive across it, attended by a whole army. Having collected all the ships that were to be found in all the havens far and wide, thus impeding the regular course of commerce and causing serious inconvenience, he drew them up in double line from Bauli to Puteoli. On this bridge of ships was placed a great floor of timber, which was covered all over with earth and paved like a high road. A new and unheard of spectacle was devised, to be exhibited on this structure before it was demolished, and the whole shore from Misennm to Puteoli was crowded with spectators. The Emperor, dressed in armor which had been worn by Alexander the Great, rode at the head of a band of soldiers, across the bridge and entered Puteoli as a conqueror. Next morning he drove back in a triumphal chariot but dressed as a charioteer of the green party. He halted at the centre of the bridge and made a speech. A banquet followed, which lasted till late in the night, and the whole scene was illuminated with torches on the bridge and on the coast. Intoxication prevailed and many spectators were drowned.
If he was zealous for his own fame, Gaius was jealous of the fame of others. He caused the statues of the distinguished men of the Republic, which Augustus had set up in the Campus, to be broken in pieces. He forbade the last descendant of the Pompeys to bear the name Magnus. He commanded the works of Virgil and Livy to be removed from the libraries, on the ground that Virgil had no genius, and that Livy was careless. He would not permit the image of his own ancestor Agrippa to be placed beside that of Augustus; he even repudiated his grandfather, and gave out that he was the grandson of Augustus and Julia, living in incest like the gods.
The extravagances of Gaius at last plunged him into financial difficulties. He exhausted the large treasures accumulated by Tiberius, and in order to refill his empty purse, he began to persecute the nobles, and confiscate the property of the rich. Hitherto, he had steadfastly and vehemently denounced all the works of Tiberius, but, pressed by want of gold, he did not hesitate to revive the law of treason and the system of delation, in order to plunder his fellow-citizens.
Appearing in the senate, he openly praised the policy of his predecessor, and announced the revival of the laws of maiestas. The senate thanked the Emperor for his clemency in permitting them to live, and decreed him special honors. Many rich senators were sacrificed to appease the Emperor’s cupidity, L. Annaeus Seneca only escaped because his declining age promised that his wealth would soon fall into the imperial coffers without prosecuting him. The noble exiles in the islands were put to death, and their fortunes confiscated. But Gaius ultimately alienated not only the senate, but the people, by imposing new taxes which affected Italy and Rome, and the soldiers, by rescinding their wills.
But before he went so far as to tax the citizens of Rome (41 A.D.), he had plundered Gaul. In September, 39 A.D., he announced that hostilities of the Germans required his presence on the Rhine, and proceeded thither with a retinue of dancers and gladiators. Lentulus Gaetulicus, a son-in-law of Sejanus, had been now for ten years the commander of the legions of the Upper Rhine. Before the death of Tiberius, he had been accused of having relaxed the discipline of the camp in order to win the favor of his soldiers. When he was threatened by disgrace, he boldly defied the Emperor to remove him from the governorship of Upper Germany, and Tiberius had left him where he was. Perhaps the purpose of the expedition of Gaius was to assert the imperial authority over this independent legatus, and restore military discipline. It is certain that the barbarians beyond the limes were at this time troublesome, and the victory which Gaius announced to the senate may have been warranted by a real repulse inflicted on some band of Germans attempting to invade Gaul. At this time a conspiracy was formed, in which Lentulus Gaetulicus was implicated. The object of the plot was to slay Gaius and place M. Aemilius Lepidus on the throne. Lepidus had been a favorite of the Emperor and a companion of all his pleasures. Gaius had given him in marriage his favorite sister, the unfortunate Drusilla, and had intended to designate him as successor to the Empire. The surviving sisters of Gaius, Agrippina and Julia, intrigued with Lepidus, and took part in this treasonable plot, which was discovered in October, 39 A.D.. Gaetulicus and Lepidus were executed, and the two women were banished. Gaius sent a full account of their adultery and treason to the senate, and asked the fathers to confer no distinctions on his kinsfolk for the future. He also sent three swords, destined for his assassination, to be dedicated as votive offerings to Mars Ultor. To fill the place of Gaetulicus, he appointed Lucius Galba (afterwards Emperor), who enforced and restored discipline among the demoralized legions.
The Emperor spent the winter at Lugudunum, where he practiced every device for extorting money from the inhabitants of Gaul. Prosecutions and executions were the order of the day. Auctions were held, at which the people were forced to buy at extravagant prices. It is said, that furniture of the imperial palace was conveyed from Rome to the banks of the Rhône, and that the Emperor himself played the auctioneer, recommending each article and encouraging the bidding. “This was my father’s”, he said, “this my great-grandfather’s; this was a trophy of Augustus; this an Egyptian rarity of Antony”. By such means the imperial coffers were enriched. Lugudunum also witnessed the great-grandson of Augustus mocking the celebration of the ceremony at his Altar, which represented the union of the Gallic provinces. Among the contests which were instituted in his honor were competitions in rhetoric and verse. Gaius compelled the unsuccessful candidates to wipe out what they had written with their tongues, under penalty of being cast into the river.
On January 1, 40 A.D., he assumed the consulship for the third time, but resigned it on the twelfth day. As his destined colleague had died before the end of the year, and the senate was afraid to nominate anyone in his place without the imperial sanction, the Emperor was sole consul during the short period of his office. In spring, he advanced northward from Lugudunum to the shores of the ocean, in order to achieve the work which his greater namesake had attempted, the conquest of Britain. This project was suggested to him by Adminius, a fugitive prince of that island, who had sought refuge with the Romans. The large army which Gaius had collected reached the Bononia of the north—otherwise called Gesoriacum—expecting to take ship there; but one day they were ordered to form in line along the shore, in full battle array, and Gaius, who reviewed his troops from a trireme, suddenly issued a command to pile arms and pick shells. The soldiers filled their helmets with the shells, which were regarded as spoils of the sea, and sent to Rome in token of the great victory won by the Emperor over the ocean and the island of the ocean. It is quite conceivable that this extraordinary caricature of a British expedition was actually enacted by the eccentric Emperor; but it is also possible that the story may be a fictitious parody of a genuine expedition which came to nothing.
Before he returned to Rome, in order to celebrate there with unheard of magnificence a triumph for his warlike exploits, Gaius visited Castra Vetera and Oppidum Ubiorum on the Lower Rhine; and report said that he conceived the monstrous idea of decimating those troops, who, twenty-five years ago, had by their mutiny caused the flight of his mother Agrippina, when he was an infant in her arms. The tale probably rests on some jest which the Emperor let fall, in his bantering manner, and which was taken up as serious. His entry into Rome (August 31, 40 A.D.) took the form of an ovation, not a triumph as he proposed. For the senate, uncertain what his real wishes were, had not ventured to decree him a triumph until the last moment; and Gaius, filled with resentment, refused their tardy offer. “I am coming”, he said, “but not for the senate, I am coming for the knights and people, who alone deserve my presence. For the senate, I will be neither prince nor a citizen, but an Imperator and a conqueror”.
From the moment of his return the Emperor threw off all the remaining disguises which cloaked the monarchy, and all the fictions of liberty. He appeared in the undisguised character of an eastern autocrat. Instead of entering Rome as a citizen, he entered in the garb of an imperator; and it is said that he would have assumed the diadem, if he had not thought himself superior to the kings of the east who wore it. The cruelties and excesses of the new tyranny, which exceeded what had been hitherto experienced, necessarily led to conspiracies. A plot, in which Anicius Cerealis, who will meet us again in a subsequent principate, took part, was detected,